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Tandem Snoozing

I co-slept with both of my babies, although it was never really my intention to do so. I’ve always been the type of person who cherishes sleep, so when we brought our daughter home from the hospital I was quite shocked at my newborn’s apparent aversion to sleeping for more than an hour at a time. I’d never been around a newborn so this lack of sleeping was quite unexpected.

One day when my daughter was around two weeks old, with me in a fatigue-induced stupor, I lay down on the bed with my daughter. She nudged her head against me in an attempt to nurse, and instead of sitting up and assuming the familiar position I just nursed while laying down. I didn’t know this was possible, but it worked splendidly and both my daughter and I fell off to sleep for almost four hours straight.

Four hours of consistent sleep for a new mom? That’s a gift more valuable than gold.

From that day on my daughter slept right next to me at night until she was around four months old. I’m certainly not saying that co-sleeping was something I would encourage, because the sleep I got was broken at best since I was too terrified of rolling over onto her to move. I will admit to you, however, that once in a while I miss sleeping next to her. The sound of her contended sighs in the middle of the night were music to my ears. Don’t get me wrong, though, I’m incredibly glad when I can get a full night’s sleep nowadays, and if I had to do it all over again I probably would have tried harder to get her into a crib from the get-go. Someone is going to have to let me in on the secret of how to do that.

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Posted by Tamsen Butler on Wednesday, January 2nd, 2008 at 9:51 pm and is filed under Breastfeeding.
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One Response to “Tandem Snoozing”

I wish I had the secret! My almost 4 year old still sneaks back in the bed with us & my 8 month old knows I will eventually pass out in the bed while I nurse her. Honestly I appreciate sleep too much to care too much. It only gets bad when someone karate chops you in the nose at 4 am.